The Good Men Project published an article last weekend based on the 100% true story of our family’s “Pool Day“. It was a comedy of errors, no less impressive than if my name was Clark W. Griswold. Oh, yeah! I just compared a day in my life to the Griswolds’. If you didn’t read that article or watch Dadnamics Live! Episode 57 Pool Day. Start there! But the story DOESN’T end there. As Clark got his revenge on Mr. Roy Wally from Wally World, my family was vindicated with total redemption just one week later.
We were 0 – 5 swimming last week, but there was one location that we kept voting down. Therefore, we loaded the van and went to that location, the local community pool. Like, duh! Why didn’t we just go there in the first place? Why did we have to get all fancy with packed historical pools, infested landmark lakes, and water slides? Ah ha! That’s the Clark W. Griswold in me.
In pool day take two, which we called “redemption”, all went perfectly. I got to swim underwater with my 5-year-old son, do dolphin laps with my daughter on my back (she’s 8). And I got to teach my 11-year-old son, finally, how to dive. My wife mostly shuttled our little guy around the shallow area. He was totally content walking up and down the pool stairs and holding the rail. Personally, I don’t see the fun in it, but he did for sure and it gave my wife an easy job basking in the 86 degree sunshine. I captured the day’s success with documentary style video. I’m guessing that doesn’t happen much at the community pool, as the lifeguards were eyeing me down suspiciously. After a few hours, we had our fill of the pool.
A wide and lively creek separates the community pool from the park, pavilion, and castle playground. We gave the kids a choice after swimming. “Do you want to go the playground with mom or walk in the creek with dad?” Three chose mom! She’s Mom-namic! My oldest chose the creek. And to be fair, this playground is pretty awesome, so I’m not surprised.
Kenny and I put on our water shoes and found a good spot to enter the creek. That took longer than it should have, simply because each of us acquired poison ivy this summer and eagerly wanted to avoid it.
Splash!
We entered the world of minnows, bugs, tadpoles, and crayfish. That’s where I went directly. I used to love turning over rocks in search for these mini lobsters. The Cajuns call them Crawdads and eat ’em. Not for us, but they are fun to find and catch. It took me some time, but I caught the biggest one I have found in over 10 years. It was a lively one, snapping at me with both claws.
Meanwhile, Kenny was way downstream doing what he loves – exploring. I called him to show him my new friend. Then we searched for one of his own. I taught him the gentle art of slowly lifting the rock, so the water stays clear. “Kenny, if you pull it up too fast, the water gets murky and the potential crayfish makes their break. Go slowly, locate, and grab him!”
Kenny procured his crayfish within 10 minutes and we immediately did a duel in the water. It was childish and immature, but so much fun.
After the creek, we joined the rest of the family in the playground where they were doing the 3-man tire swing. We helped out however we could before recruiting them to try to scale the one playground wall. It’s difficult. My daughter fell on her first attempt and cried. Then, she “tried again”… a great theme here along with redemption. She scaled it the wall with difficulty on her second attempt and succeeded.
There you have it. As a family, we had a great trip. We had our elusive pool time plus creek time and playground time. It was a perfect day. And that was after a pretty amazing morning where forgiveness flowed between me and my father. But I’ll save that for next week’s post…
